From the beginning of the sausage industry, the sausage has always been made in a casing that would facilitate osmosis. The first sausage was made from animal intestines and osmosis was used to get the smoke through the casing and onto the surface of the sausage without penetrating into the sausage. The smoke, whether liquid smoke or natural, must not be mixed through the emulsion because it causes a bitter taste. Eventually, the industry developed an artificial casing that had the qualities of osmosis, and that has been the standard for many years.
When the casing is stuffed with sausage, it is then hung in a smokehouse so that natural smoke passes through the casing by osmosis and unites with the surface only of the sausage, the chemical reaction between the smoke and protein of the sausage forms an artificial skin on the outside surface of the sausage. After processing, the original casing is discarded. Again, it is very important that the smoke does not mix with the sausage other than just at the surface of the sausage, and under the artificial casing. The artificial casing that is capable of osmosis is very expensive and yet it is used almost exclusively, other than natural casing, for making most kinds of sausage. Some attempts have been made to introduce liquid smoke to a sausage strand, but they have not been greatly successful because the liquid became mixed into the sausage. See U.S. Pat. No. 5,238,442.
When a long shirred casing is used, which is standard practice, the stuffing meat horn must be quite small in diameter in order to take the shirred casing. This means that as the casing is stuffed on a small diameter horn, the velocity of the emulsion coming out of the horn is quite great and any liquid smoke on the inside of the casing would be mixed with the meat emulsion due to the turbulence of the emulsion. This unavoidable turbulence, because of the diameter of the casing compared to the diameter of the small horn extruding the emulsion, is the principal reason why it has never been successful to put the smoke inside the surface of the casing as it is being injected with emulsion.
A further problem of existing sausage machines is that the completed linked sausages are placed in loops of several sausage links on a conveyor having a plurality of moving hooks. Enlongated sticks are then inserted through a number of loops, and the loaded stick is then transported to the smokehouse for cooking and for the introduction of smoke through the osmosis type casing material. After cooking and smoking, the sausage strand is then cut into individual links and packaged. This entire process takes time and is labor intensive.
It is therefore a principal object of this invention to provide a method and means of applying a liquid to the surface of an extruded strand of meat emulsion which will prevent the liquid from becoming intermixed with the strand of meat emulsion.
A further object of this invention is to rotate a casing and a strand of meat emulsion in the same direction and at the same velocity so that when liquid is applied therebetween as the meat emulsion is discharged into the casing, turbulence in the meat emulsion will be avoided.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a method and means of applying a liquid to the surface of an extruded strand of meat emulsion which can eliminate the use of an osmosis-type casing material.
A still further object of this invention is to use a non-osmosis casing material with liquid smoke being delivered to the surface of the sausage in the sausage making process, to permit the sausage links to be directly delivered to a microwave cooker and thence to a cutting, cooling and package machine immediately downstream from the sausage making machine to avoid use of the conventional cooking and smokehouse procedure.
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.